The Old Hall, Front Street, West Auckland,Bishop Auckland. £450k



Here’s a beautiful little thing.  Listed Grade ii* with seven bedrooms, for only £450k.

The house is currently divided up as a farmhouse and separate office, but is being sold as one piece.  I think if I was shown only the photograph and not given the address I would guess the house was in Somerset and put a price tag of £750k on it.  As it is way up north in West Auckland though it is good it has its own walled garden as spring comes very late in that neck of the woods (about 5 weeks later than sunny East Yorkshire.)

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57787479.html








Sorry, Iforgot to edit the pictures. 

Anyway, you can see what a beautiful darling it is.  Do you like that shade of green that the front door is, with the golden stone?  I do, but I think I would have chosen a Heavenly blue instead.  



You’ve heard of the elephant in the room, here’s
the elephant on the landing.  This seems to be the original early staircase, in terms of its design, but looks in rather modern nick on the photograph and maybe something of a ‘Ship of Theseus’.


https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1209888

The listing information doesn’t mention the coat of arms.  Images of England has closed now and one
 is directed to the above site, but this does not contain an image of the property. 


Wonderful old stone mullions, crying out for beautiful simple flower arrangements in stone jars. 




Wonderful early fireplace. Look at that herringbone stone work, and the huge, gothic fireback. I wish it wasn’t carpeted right up to the edge of the hearth, one would hardly dare to set fire to those logs .  I think that is its original bread oven at the side.  



Another good fireplace in here, this time with a woodburner that would feel a bit safer. I like the orange colour behind it.  My parents bedroom in our Elizabethan house was painted that colour, so I have happy memories of lying on their orange bedspread in their orange bedroom, looking at the patterns the knots made on the underside of the attic floorboards between the joists and the beams.  I gave names to some of them, one of them was Pauline Bushnall, after the news reader on Radio 4. 










All is livable with, if a little over modernised on the fitted carpet front and so on.  As with most of these early props it’s just crying out for imagination and daring and artistic flare with early furniture, paint colour and works of art.  




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Greenhead Manor, Greenhead Lane, Reedley, Burnley, Lancashire. £925k

Image
Greenhead Manor House, is listed grade ii* and I guess it has been sandblasted, because it is close enough to industrial Lancashire, though in the country, to be black, otherwise.  These days conservation officers regard the sooty deposits as part of a property’s history, which is fair enough, but I can’t help preferring the un sooty ones.  I think the old cleaning methods were also deleterious to the stone work, but about 10 years ago my father sat next to an architect at a dinner party who had invented a stone cleaning method they were using at St Pauls Cathedral, so sensitive methods are available, where their use is allowed. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55928319.html https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/search/?q=BB12+9NR#.XTIbbcrTWf1 The gardens are pleasant and well maintained.  It is probably slightly too tame, one longs for a bit of Wuthering Heights style wilderness.  The whole property looks to have been well restored,
Read more

Hebblethwaite House, Westgate Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire £300k

Image
 Hebblethwaite House is listed grade ii * and is within Bridlington’s old town, a lovely conservation area near the Abbey.  At the back is a Council estate, which will undoubtedly put off many snobbish people who would otherwise wish to undertake the restoration of such an historically interesting building. I visited the house on the 18th of July.  The council estate seemed fairly quiet, there were lots of pretty gardens. Hebblethwaite  House dates from the last quarter of the 17th century.  It is one of very few houses in Britain with what I think of as ‘Vermeer type windows’.  There are hundreds of properties whose fenestration is the earlier, stone mullioned sort and many larger houses whose mullions are also transomed.  Of course there are all sorts of sashes, too, from the earliest sort, on view at Bell Hall, near York, for example, with their tremendously thick  glazing bars where the window is flat with the wall, through to the Edwardian replacements of earlier fenestratio
Read more

Clunton, Shropshire Grade ii* listed black and white farm, malthouse, barns, land

  https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/100861382#/media?id=media0 I haven’t uploaded anything to this blog for ages because one hardly sees any period building decorated with good taste these days. They are all full of modern rubbish or the worst type of gypo/footballer’s wife kind of ‘style’.  Here is a beautiful historic property decorated with good quality period oak furniture and with beautiful old kitchens, barns and land with ayoung orchard, looking out towards the #Shropshire hills. Altogether ajoy to behold and restore one’s faith in English conservatism, though no doubt it will be snapped up by some spivvy oik wanting to ‘update’ it. 
Read more